What is the Physical Meaning of the Hartree-Fock Approximation?

[jl29488]

What is the physical meaning of this approximation? Qualitatively I'm finding it hard to know what differentiates it from other approximation methods...

 

[vanhees71]

It's a bit tedious to work out the Hartree-Fock method in this forum. To start, have a look at Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartree–Fock_method

If you have specific questions, post again!

 

[e.bar.goum]

It's a mean-field approximation. You describe the behaviour of one particle in the many body system as if it were in a mean field created by all the other particles in the system.

Super useful.